Yes i can do that , but the $match doesn’t support full text search like $search does. query is a small part of a very big query which also include the search on text , date, string, number, objectId types and uses custom analyzers, combinations of $must, $mustNot, $should, $filter etc. I can use compound in $search but not in $match.
I also agree that i can replicate the whole query (and i did it earlier), the query then spans to 4000 lines and very diffcult to maintain. using $search i can write much cleaner and self explanatory query (without having to deal with deep nesting of $or and $and).
But above all, I was curious that if the $search syntax is promoted so much in atlas docs, there must be a way which i might be missing 
I tried and failed so can you please check once more for the arrayField as i cannot use range or equals there.